Fascinating, that a billionaire can be so economically illiterate. He claims that the fact that there are more CEOs today than in the past is an argument for minimum wage – while keeping a straight face.

Like the minimum wage affected the people he is referring to. Insane. Just insane that he thinks more high-wage workers with high qualifications mean that a forced higher wage for low-income workers without qualifications will be just the same.

I guess you have to be a billionaire not to understand that starting a new business becomes much more risky and may often even be impossible, if you are forced to pay a high wage right from the beginning. But his companies don’t have that problem, so he’s all for a higher minimum wage. Like crony-capitalists always are. It makes competition from innovative startups almost impossible. In Germany, the postal service advocated the first minimum wage in the country. A minimum wage its competitor couldn’t afford, so it went bankrupt, 8.000 people lost their job and the competition was gone.

That’s „why plutocrats like him have always found persuasive stories to tell everyone else, about why positions that benefits his companies most and harm others are morally right and good for everyone.“

He’s probably completely out of touch with reality in his dozens of homes, his yacht and his private plane by now.

After serious pressure from the German minister of justice, Facebook now has started to censor Postings in Europe and Germany in particular. According to the ZDF, postings will be deleted and the users may be banned if they contain “attacks” against races, ethnicity, national background, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, serious disability or illness.
Interestingly, there is no definition of what constitutes an “attack”. Is it an attack on race if you write you don’t want any immigration from Asia? Is it an attack on ethnicity, if you want to stop any further immigration by Arabs?

Both statements are clearly protected by free speech in Germany, unless perhaps if “because they are inferior” is added as a justification for that opinion.

Both statements may be considered stupid, but stupidity is legal. Still, no one knows how the anonymous censor will judge it.

“Attacks on religious identity” are also forbidden. Does this mean any criticism of Islam will lead to the ban of the person expressing it?

“Attacks on gender identity” may very well mean that the madness of the gender ideology, for instance the claimed existence of 65 genders and the idea a man doesn’t become a man because of his penis, but because he was indoctrinated through his parents raising him as a boy – can no longer be criticized – and thus attacked – on facebook without risking deletion of your account.
There cannot be enough emphasis on the word “attack”. We are not talking about calls for violence or heinous defamations. Attack is, what we Germans call a “rubber-word”. You can stretch it to cover practically everything.

The German minister of justice has pressured Facebook. His job includes protection of the constitution with its Article 5 guarantee against censorship. There will be no due process. No hearing the other side. No appeal and no probation, if the facebook censor doesn’t grant it. Those censored will not even know who enforced the censorship.

300 people were hired to perform this work. It is highly unlikely they all will be judicial experts. The number of comments will make it impossible for an overseer to double check and there won’t be any time to look into the context of a comment which may be a sarcastic exaggeration.

People making a living through Facebook will now have to consider in detail what they say, or to risk losing their livelihood. This will lead to self-censorship that occurs in despotic nations.
And, as a funny anecdote at the end: These measures weren’t deemed necessary when anti-jewish mobs ravaged German streets in 2014, shouting “Hamas, Hamas, Jews in the Gas” among other solgans and posting comments accordingly all over Facebook. But this is from a minister of justice, who called the terror attack on Charly Hebdo an “attack on Islam” while visiting a big mosque just hours after four Jews were killed because they were Jews in the kosher supermarket Hyper Casher. And of course, he didn’t visit a synagogue after that.

Barack Hussein Obama’s reelection seems to have assured the end of the old USA. A coalition of people, characterized by Bill O’Riley with the sticky “they want stuff”, has reelected the most socialist president in US history. The president, known for his wish to “spread the wealth” has already changed the country in a way that seemed irreversible. Without a wonder, the path to a welfare state of European model seems sure.

Fiscal policy as a road to socialism
In accordance with his believe in Keynes‘ fiscal policies, Obama tried to end the recession with a spending spree. As this policy was paid for by debt, the US faces a interest payments as a significant part in their budget already.
But spent money has to be earned, too. If not today, then someone in the future, including interest. Moreover, every dollar spent gives the government power over the person receiving it as well as over the person it is taken from.
Part of the spending was the increase of the state sector in the economy and the increase of welfare programs. But every beneficiary of this “free stuff”, no matter whether it is social security, food stamps or salary for government employment will never vote for a decrease of the government sector or the abolishment of social welfare programs. As all those people still got their vote, they are an ever increasing force in future elections. Politicians on the other hand know quite well that the votes of those folks can be bought by an increase in their apanage. They also know, that a deliberate increase of that caste will bring them further votes. Through his reelection, Obama has gained four more years to increase the number of direct government beneficiaries. The immediate consequence is, that the Republicans, being more interested in austerity, will have an ever harder time to gain a majority in future elections. But to roll back the current development, a decrease in aid money and a decrease of the government sector is necessary.
With the described shift in the population and an ever increasing caste of beneficiaries of government money, retaking the office of the president in 2016 will only work if the republican candidate by than also runs with a “social program”, promising the decribed caste at least no decrease in their subsidies.
From that point of view, the change of the American political society into a welfare state alike those in Europe seems to be a fixed deal.

Obama’s “the best is yet to come” sounds like a terrible threat in that regard.